A single embryonic stem cell can develop into more than 200 specialized cell types that make up our body. This maturation process is called differentiation and is tightly regulated. If the regulation is lost, ...

(Phys.org)—Crime can happen anywhere, but it usually doesn't. Researchers have noticed that criminal activity seems to be concentrated in self-perpetuating hotspots. Crime leads to more crime. Then, from ...

By reproducing in the laboratory the complex interactions that cause human genes to turn on inside cells, Duke University bioengineers have created a system they believe can benefit gene therapy research ...

In this week's issue of Science Signaling (22 January, 2013), Danen and colleagues of the Division of Toxicology of LACDR report novel insights into the question how stem cells decide to commit suicide when their DNA is dam ...

(Phys.org)—Epigenetics - the science of how gene activity can be altered without changes in the genetic code - plays a critical role in every aspect of life, from the differentiation of stem cells to the ...

In a novel use of gene knockout technology, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine tested the same gene inserted into 90 different locations in a yeast chromosome – and ...

Hybrid plants provide much higher yield than their homozygous parents. Plant breeders have known this for more than 100 years and used this effect called heterosis for richer harvests. Until now, science ...

The molecular mechanisms whereby a spectrum of dahlias, from white to yellow to red to purple, get their colour are already well known, but the black dahlia has hitherto remained a mystery. Now, a study ...

A new tool for neuroscientists delivers a thousand pinpricks of light to a chunk of gray matter smaller than a sugar cube. The new fiber-optic device, created by biologists and engineers at the Massachusetts ...

Up to ten per cent of the active genes of an organism that has survived 80 million years without sex are foreign, a new study from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London reveals. The asexual ...

(Phys.org)—A new way to visualize single-cell activity in living zebrafish embryos has allowed scientists to clarify how cells line up in the right place at the right time to receive signals about the next ...

(Phys.org)—Proteomics experts and resources at EMSL contributed to a study published in Science centered on the discovery of new bacteria and the metabolic roles, such as carbon cycling, of bacteria in the ...

(Phys.org)—A new University of Maryland study of worms that reproduce without a mate shows that not only have these creatures lost their mojo in the dating game of evolution, they've lost thousands of genes ...

Johns Hopkins researchers have succeeded in teaching computers how to identify commonalities in DNA sequences known to regulate gene activity, and to then use those commonalities to predict other regulatory ...